


out of all the things i could've said, that's the one i chose

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:00:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is an uneducated and ignorant art spectator, Louis’s ass is way too nice, and Harry may or may not embarrass himself over a painting of what could be a vagina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of all the things i could've said, that's the one i chose

It’s all swirls and geometric colors and Harry’s not really sure what he’s supposed to be looking for. Maybe it’s one of those paintings where if you look really hard, you can see three things: a man sitting on a corner with a pipe in his mouth, the outline of two women kissing, or a vagina. Harry’s pretty sure it’s none of those things. It really just looks like someone got angry with their paint and figured the best punishment was to harshly splash it onto the starkly white canvas. 

Harry’s pretty sure he’s not the right person to be judging art, if all he can see are vaginas. 

He’s not really sure why he’s here, if he’s being honest. The tall vaulted ceilings and chilled glasses of champagne aren’t really his style, but Zayn made him promise he’d come, told him it’d be worth his while when the artist himself showed up. The ‘artist’ has yet to appear and Harry thinks Zayn might’ve made up the fact that he knows him, just to get Harry to come out of his flat and stop being a moody writer. 

He can see Zayn across the hall. He hasn’t even made a pretense to be looking at the art, like Harry is. He’s talking to some brown-haired boy with wide shoulders a and a bit of a puppy-dog look on his face. Zayn’s all up in his personal space with his predator face on, so Harry rolls his eyes and makes a mental note to shoot Ed a text asking if he can stay at his place tonight, because Zayn will either be busy with a broad-shouldered boy, or he’ll be so sexually frustrated that staying in the same flat as him while he’s in that kind of state will not be fun, as Harry has experienced in the past.

Zayn’s got his smirky face on now, the one where he knows he’s caught his prey in his net and he’s smug about it. The attack is gone, it’s all about the drawing in and persuasion. The brown-haired boy seems to be falling for it, if his fingers on Zayn’s wrist are anything to go by. Why did Zayn even invite Harry to this stupid art show if he was just going to flirt with other art-obsessed boys, instead of feeling Harry up whenever he was bored and buying him something blue and shiny at the bar afterwards. Harry shakes his head. Zayn has his priorities wrong.

At least Harry stands thoughtfully in front of painting that may or may not be of vaginas and tilts his head, thoughtfully stroking his fingers over his chin like he sees the meaning of life in the blocky reds and swirled blues. Harry’s long fingers are wrapped around the stem of his champagne glass and if he was the kind of person who said these things, he’d wager he looked pretty sophisticated at the moment. 

‘Do you like it?’ A voice next to his elbow says, and Harry snaps out of his reverie about sophistication. The voice belongs to a face that really doesn’t belong anywhere near Harry’s lack of self-control. Cheekbones that could slice through his fingers and long, dark eyelashes framing blue eyes that are currently glittering questioningly at Harry. He’s got a funny muss of a fringe that Harry wants to sweep his fingers through and brush to the side of his tanned forehead, where a few thin lines run through the skin as his brows knit in question.

‘That depends. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be looking for,’ Harry looks sideways at the boy, his voice dipping into a few octaves below his normal range, because, what, he may be sophisticated but he can enjoy an attractive boy when he wants to and this may or may not be his flirting voice.

‘Well, what do you see?’ Fringe asks, cocking his head and looking at Harry, almost like he’s daring him to say something philosophical and meaningful about the painting. He’s got a small smile tucked into the corner of thin pink lips and Harry wants to poke it. He’s moved into Harry’s space a little bit more now, and Harry can feel the warmth radiating off of him, inches from Harry’s hip. His dark gray pants are ironed very nicely, hugging his curvy thighs in a way that should be illegal. Harry appreciates nice clothes. He doesn’t like a sloppy dresser. The dress pants fall to the tops of a pair of black Toms, though, and well, that’s interesting. 

‘I think the artist really captured the sense of longing,’ Harry starts bullshitting his answer, hoping the boy is just another spectator who’ll be impressed when Harry starts spewing things like he knows so much about art. ‘I can see a lot of desire in this painting, especially with the fading of the red right here,’ Harry points a finger at the canvas without touching it, ‘into the yellow. That represents the artist’s need for control.’

‘Really,’ Fringe deadpans. His smile is a full-blown grin now, tiny fangs poking out over his lips. His blue eyes are sparkling at Harry, telling him to go on, keep impressing him with his inexhaustible source of knowledge about the artist’s intentions behind the painting. 

‘Oh, definitely.’ Harry nods his head like he knows what he’s talking about. He squints at Fringe and then back at the painting. ‘This really speaks to me, in volumes, actually.’

‘Yeah?’ Fringe’s voice is lilting, high but scratchy, and Harry wants to get lost in the sound of it. He wants to hook his thumbs in the belt-loops on those charcoal pants and ask him why the fuck he’s wearing Toms with dress pants. And then he wants to kiss the smirk right off his face and have those fangs draw blood on his own lips. 

He settles for a ‘yeah’. 

“If I’m being honest with you, I sorta feel like the artist might’ve been drunk while painting this. At least. If not high,’ Fringe says mischievously, turning his head towards the painting. ‘This right here,’ he points towards a splash of blue, ‘this seems to me to be the artist’s way of saying ‘fuck all’, because he realizes he’s out of vodka and all he’s got left is shitty wine and that’s definitely not a way to spend a Friday night.’

Harry snorts into his sleeve, because yeah, that’s kind of the same feeling he was getting from the painting. All sophistication aside, the painting seems to be a blurb of half-attempts at beauty and maybe a few too many drinks fucking up the artist’s aim.

‘Can I be honest with you?’ Harry asks Fringe, after his giggling has subsided. 

Fringe moves closer and Harry can see flecks of gold in the blue of his eyes. His skin is deeply golden, like he spent too much time on a tropical island and Harry groans inwardly at the thought of this boy’s body in swimming trunks, because hell if that thought isn’t sinful as fuck. He’s got small hands, with short, bluntly cut nails. He grasps one of Harry’s hands and brings it to his heart, folding those tiny fingers over Harry’s large ones, barely covering them.

‘Curly, of course you can. Be honest with me. I fully appreciate every one of your thoughts,’ Fringe says earnestly, as if the sly solemnity of his tone isn’t belying all the cheekiness that lies under the surface. His eyes sparkle with barely-concealed mirth and Harry snorts one more time into his sleeve.

‘Well, my first reaction when I saw this painting was that it was a bunch of vaginas.’ Harry comes clean, dissolving his facade of being an art connoisseur.

Fringe’s eyes open hilariously wide, shocked, before a charming giggle falls out of his perfect mouth, head tilting back and exposing the long line of his throat as bubbly laughter spills out of his throat. Harry’s fingers itch to touch him, but he holds back, revels in the feel of the crisp shirt under his fingers that are still clasped to Fringe’s chest. 

‘Harry?’ Zayn appears on his other side, a confused look on his face at the way Harry’s standing there with a small smile on his face as Fringe holds onto his hand and giggles uncontrollably. 

‘Ah, Harry, so the art-expert has a name!’ Fringe wiggles his eyebrows up and down and let’s Harry’s hand fall back to his side. Harry pretends like he doesn’t feel bereft at the loss of warmth on his fingers.

‘Yeah. I’m Harry. I’d shake your hand but you just held onto my fingers for the better part of a minute, so I think we’re acquainted already.’ Harry smiles at Fringe, soaking in the way the smaller boy’s eyes are raking along his face and torso like he thinks Harry won’t notice. Oh, he notices.

‘Yeah, Lou, this is Harry?’ Zayn sounds completely and utterly confused as he witnesses the exchange between Harry and Fringe, who now appears to be called Lou. Wait a second, Zayn knows this boy? Why has Harry never seen him before? Why does Zayn always keep the lovely boys for himself? Harry adds to his mental checklist the fact that he needs to scroll through Zayn’s phone more often and call the names that seem intriguing. He’s sure somebody named Lou would have merited a drunk call on Harry’s part.

Fringe/Lou lights up at that and seems to look at Harry with whole new ideas. ‘Oh my gosh, you’re creepy writer kid!? The one who sits in parks and looks at people?’ He looks back and forth between Zayn and Harry, like one of them is going to confirm that, and Harry is caught between wanting to slap Zayn for making him out to be some batshit crazy poet and loving the way Fringe/Lou’s hips sway as he turns between Harry and Zayn. He can’t help but notice that there’s quite the lovely ass attached to those hips.

‘I suppose I am. I mean, I write for my college newspaper?’ Now Harry is shy, tripping over his words as Fringe/Lou continues to gaze at him. ‘Just some small stuff. Not much of anything.’

Fringe/Lou smiles at him and Harry’s insides want to melt. That’s stupid, he’s not a 14 year old, his heart doesn’t melt and he doesn’t think that the way the light streaming through the large windows is glancing off Fringe/Lou’s cheekbones is the loveliest thing he’s ever seen.

‘Oh my fucking god,’ Zayn huffs out, exasperated. ‘Stop flirting. Harry, this is Louis. The artist?’

Harry claps a hand over his mouth in horror and takes a step back, knocking into Zayn. This is the artist. The artist whose painting Harry was likening to vaginas in his very presence. Harry can feel the flush working its way up his chest and neck and he’s pretty sure that if you can die from embarrassment, that will be the ‘cause of death’ on his death certificate. 

Louis is smirking cheekily and Harry wants to wipe the smirk off his face for letting him stand there and make a fool of himself.

‘Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry. Vaginas, I don’t even know what I was thinking, I actually think it’s quite beautiful, I was serious when I said it spoke to me, I think there’s a lovely quality to it, the vaginas thing was just a joke, oh my god,’ Harry babbles on and on, thinking maybe if he says enough and confuses Louis enough, he’ll forget that Harry calmly and coolly stated that he thought Louis’s painting looked like a certain part of the female anatomy.

‘What the fuck, Harry, what are you talking about, shut up,’ Zayn lightly punches his arm and gives him a ‘what the fuck are you on’ look. Harry closes his mouth and swears never to open it again.

‘Mate, it’s fine, it’s quite the compliment, even if vaginas sorta freak me out,’ Louis laughs, the lovely tinkling sound of it filling Harry’s ears and he thinks Louis looks a bit like a fairy creature, all sharp teeth and blue eyes and a slight stubble across his pointed chin. Harry wants to lick his jaw. It’s not fair to be that attractive and do it so carelessly, like it’s not slowly killing Harry and probably every other person in the room.

‘I’m just going to pretend like I know what’s going on.’ Zayn says slowly, looking back and forth between the two boys, like he doesn’t even want to know what happened. ‘Harry, you ready to go?’

‘What, it wasn’t happening with Puppy-face over there?’ Harry can’t help his own jibe at Zayn, still pissy over the fact that Zayn knew somebody as attractive as Louis and never told him.

Zayn glares back at him. ‘It was going perfectly fine until his boyfriend showed up.’ Zayn throws his head in a vague direction and Harry looks over to see some blond kid snogging the hell out of Puppy-face. Puppy-face’s hands are up underneath the blond boy’s shirt. Well, that seems appropriate for an art gallery.

‘That’s Niall. He’s Irish,’ Louis says, as if that explains everything. Zayn rolls his eyes at Louis.

‘Whatever, mate, good show, yeah?’ Zayn reaches out and gives Louis a one-armed hug.

All Harry wants to do is walk away, forget he ever said the word ‘vagina’ in Louis’s presence and huddle under his covers until the embarrassment of the whole ordeal has been forgotten. And then he may steal Zayn’s cigarettes and flush them down the toilet, just to be a little shit.

He and Zayn are halfway across the gallery before Louis’s elfin voice is calling across the empty space, echoing across the tiles and getting down inside Harry’s collar.

‘Harry!’

Harry turns around and Louis is standing in front of the vagina painting, his hands in his pockets, hip thrust out and smiling cheekily at Harry.

‘Yeah?’

‘Dinner on Tuesday night?’

It’s all Harry can do to hide his grin from Zayn. He wants to jump up and down and maybe let out one or two little squeals. He wills himself to calm down. He lets his eyes travel up Louis’s body, up his thighs encased in those tight dress pants, across the soft bulge of his tummy pushing at the buttons of his shirt, up the smooth expanse of chest and tiny tuft of hair that’s poking out of the top of the unbuttoned collar, until he reaches those blue eyes that are watching Harry watch him. A little shiver runs up Harry’s spine at the narrowing of Louis’s eyes as the smirk widens and he finds himself answering before he even thinks.

‘Yeah. Alright. It’s a date.’

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr>](http://queenmcgonagall.tumblr.com/post/31645722676/out-of-all-the-things-i-could-have-said-thats-the-one)


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